


Then you can breathe

by shinyopals



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Martin experiences Regret, POV Martin Blackwood, Post-Apocalypse, Spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 5, insofar as s5 of this damn podcast allows me to write comfort, post MAG175: Epoch, specifically Regret around a certain piece of furniture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26566894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyopals/pseuds/shinyopals
Summary: ‘We’ve got a few minutes, right? I could do with–’ Martin sighs again before deciding to just spit it out, ‘changing my trousers after sitting on that couch.’Jon does not evenattemptnot to smirk, the dickhead, and Martin isn’t sure whether he should be pleased or not that he still finds that smug lookso damn attractive. Then there’s a brief rise of static and– ‘We’re safe to stop,’ Jon confirms, stepping back towards Martin.A moment of respite from their journey.Right up until it isn't.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 31
Kudos: 173





	Then you can breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Ostentenacity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostentenacity/) for reading this through and giving me the confidence to post and some super helpful beta feedback! <3 <3 <3

The idea that Basira and Daisy are close brings with it an energy that Martin has forgotten he ever possessed. He finds himself easily keeping pace with Jon’s ridiculous power walking, and for once the ache in his legs feels satisfying, like they’re getting somewhere. He’s trying to clamp down on his imagination all the same. He’s not stupid – he knows not to be optimistic, knows what Jon has told him – he just wants…

But there’s not much point in thinking about that.

Amidst the discarded tin cans and industrial run-off puddles that shimmer in a slick unnatural rainbow and morass of tangled plastic, Martin has to concentrate as he walks, keeping his eyes forward and down, picking his way across the litter as not to trip and fall. He’s unable to look at Jon for longer than a few half-second glances. What glances he does get, however, tell him that, as is often the case, Jon might as well be sleep-walking. His eyes are unfocussed, off into the middle distance (and he somehow doesn’t trip at all, the jammy git – Martin doesn’t particularly envy Jon, but right now he’d give his right arm for being able to see everything coming _before_ he trips over it without needing to keep his eyes down). Jon’s mouth is turned downwards as he walks. Martin worries his lip over that one for a few moments, but in the end categorises it as not a look of particularly acute distress. He knows Jon’s frowns well, after all, and thinks this one is just a fairly run-of-the-mill, I’m-walking-through-an-apocalyptic-hellscape sort of frown. Not anything that needs interrogating.

Once, not so long ago, the silence between them might have bothered Martin; he might have felt like it was something he had to fill, to prove that things were OK. Now they’ve walked and they’ve walked and they’ve talked and they’ve talked, and there’s something enough in just being next to each other.

So walk next to each other they do. Jon frowning. Martin not… not smiling, because of course he’s not. But sort of… trying not to let too much hope bubble up and feeling it trying to do so all the same.

They must be nearing the edge of the domain – the rubbish is starting to peter out, and the patches of ground between them look less like poison and more just like dirt – when the practicalities begin to catch up with Martin.

There aren’t many practicalities in their life now, of course.

He’d always sort of thought, from movies and video games, that he’d had a handle on what the end of the world would be like. Screaming crowds. Looting. Guns. The White House getting blown up. Then scattered encampments of humanity trading food and shelter and working together to fight back against the enemy, be it zombies or aliens.

Instead it’s… not. 

Instead it’s just… heart-rending terror that loops into moments of profound emptiness that he sometimes wonders if he’s the only one who gets to feel, protected as he is by Jon’s… whatever it is.

How long has he walked beside, behind, in front of Jon, every moment the same because time itself no longer exists. He’s not wanting for food, or drink, or even sleep. He hasn’t shaved, and yet his cheeks are as smooth as they have been for what must be weeks now. His hair hasn’t grown, and nor have his nails. He is trapped in his body as it was, the moment of the Change. (He’d made a half-hearted joke, once, about being glad he hadn’t been needing to pee when everything had got to hell, and Jon’s deadpan ‘Mm, probably a good thing’ had been _extremely disconcerting_. Jon’s refusal to clarify if he’d been joking had at least been a probable indication he thought he was being funny, but that hadn’t made Martin much happier.)

The only practicality that still exists is dirt.

It’s mundane. 

Benign, even, compared to the horror show and the monsters and the tortured remains of humanity that exist as background radiation, thick and heavy in his mind.

However, it still exists. It’s still a thing. 

And it’s a thing they can’t seem to do a damn thing about most of the time, since it’s not like the domains of the fears are overwhelmingly populated by bathrooms and launderettes.

All the same, the back of Martin’s trousers has started to dry off, and it’s getting stiff and itchy and unpleasant to walk and he’s really, _really_ wishing he hadn’t sat on that stupid couch. He’d known it, the exact moment he sat, but, well… Jon had been so… so… Jon.

He sighs. There is no way he’s getting out of this with his dignity unscathed. He stops walking.

It takes Jon a handful of steps to come back down from whatever cloud – or horrible spiral – his thoughts were on, and notice Martin’s no longer beside him, stop, and turn around.

‘Martin?’

‘We’ve got a few minutes, right?’ A nod. ‘I could do with–’ He sighs again before deciding to just spit it out, ‘changing my trousers.’

Jon does not even _attempt_ not to smirk, the dickhead, and Martin isn’t sure whether he should be pleased or not that he still finds that smug look _so damn attractive_. Then there’s a brief rise of static and– ‘We’re safe to stop,’ Jon confirms, stepping back towards Martin.

Martin shrugs off his rucksack and shoves it into Jon’s hands. ‘I still got to sit down!’ he says, trying to sound triumphant and mostly just sounding petulant.

‘Mm-hmm,’ says Jon, who does not sound like he’s buying it, his eyes still sparkling with barely repressed humour.

Ignoring Jon with as much dignity as he can, Martin bends to unlace his boots. Once done, he stands, toes out of them, and unzips his trousers. Jon is watching him, amusement laced with enough fondness that even now it’s almost enough to halt Martin in his tracks. That Jon looks like that, at _him_... 

Still. He’s got things to be doing. He shoves his trousers down over his hips and tries not to think too hard about the weird screech of the creatures that he’s trying to tell himself are definitely seagulls and other totally harmless things. Jon’s checked, and will keep checking, and it’s not like they’d be any safer seeking out some facsimile of shelter. 

And those things are _definitely seagulls_.

All the same, standing at the edge of the world’s largest rubbish dump in his boxers and socks, just knowing the sorts of things that are out there – not least of which is probably spying on them from the Panopticon – is hardly comforting. Martin shivers. He knows he’s always watched now. Has been since before all of this. Standing in the middle of nowhere to change is functionally no less private than his bedroom, but it still feels… so… so… _something_.

‘All right?’ says Jon lightly, his gaze swooping down and across Martin’s face, a touch of a frown.

‘Yeah, bit breezy,’ said Martin, keeping his voice airy.

‘Mmm,’ agrees Jon, who is always cold, as he unzips Martin’s pack and begins to hunt for Martin’s spare trousers. 

Martin shivers again and hunches his shoulders into himself. He raises the trousers he’s just removed and turns them to inspect them and-

Oh _Christ_ was he _wearing_ these?

The sight of what he’s facing hits him in the gut.

The damp discomfort of the last hour of so’s walk he’s been rationalising. Telling himself it’s just like if he’d sat on a park bench after it rained, or on the grass first thing in the morning. Faced with the greenish, blackish miasma that’s permeated the denim, that denial feels as rotten as the inside of his throat. 

Without consciously deciding to do it, he reaches up with his left hand, brushes his finger against the blackened mass. It’s slick and sticky, and when he jerks his hand away there’s a dark, oily stain. Blanching, he rubs his finger against a cleaner area of his jeans, but all that seems to do is spread the blackish horror around, thinning the layer slightly until he can see the whorls of his fingerprints, the filth really bedded in.

He makes a noise.

He must make a noise, anyway, because there is Jon.

‘Martin?’

‘I– I– need– change of boxers–’ manages Martin, his voice high and cracking.

‘Right,’ says Jon, after a second’s pause. He stoops then, resting the pack on the ground to search more effectively. His rapid, concentrated motions have an intensity to them that Martin tries to focus on, but he can’t stop his eyes from being drawn back to the horrible mess on his hands and clothes.

 _It’s safe,_ Martin reminds himself. If it weren’t safe, Jon would have said something long ago. Before he even sat on the stupid couch. _It’s safe. It’s safe. It’s safe._

He’s shaking his hand in the air, jerking, frantic motions that he doesn’t have complete control over because he just wants this _off_. He pushes his disgusting, filthy jeans away from him and to the floor, sucking in a burst of air as he does and pushing it out just as quickly. Even that seems unnatural and cloying, carrying on it a wash of burning plastic on the breeze. He’s still shaking his hand, trying to just get it off _get it off get it off get it off_.

There’s no water. 

There’s just endless piles of disgusting rubbish, stretching out over land that is no place and no time. There are Coke cans and a Tesco shopping bag, a fishing net draped over a bulky sign, the logo of which is obscured but still easily readable as a petrol station. Underneath the jeans he’s thrown, the edge of it now fluttering in the breeze, purple and shiny, is a wrapper from one of his favourite chocolate bars. 

And there’s still no _fucking water_.

A great lump rises in Martin’s throat and he chokes out a helpless, desperate croaking noise, somewhere between a sob and a wail, because there’s _no water_ , and there’ll _never be any water_ , and this is it, for him, for the rest of his forever, trapped and disgusting and awful.

Jon is standing again. Through the frosted glass wall of his tears Martin is aware of Jon's hands, like butterfly wings about him, but never touching.

‘Martin? Are– are you–? Of course you’re not– I’m sorry– I shouldn’t have–’

Another heaving sob rises and Martin tries to push it down, tries to force it elsewhere, pushes his eyes shut. He wants to touch Jon. He wants to fall into Jon’s arms and hold him. He knows if he does he might never stop. He knows if he does all the– _everything_ coating him will be forced onto Jon. 

He shakes his hand trying to dislodge the stain but it doesn’t move and _there’s still no water_.

Jon is talking. 

The actual words don’t quite come through, but it’s a noise that’s soothing in a world with precious little that is. Martin thinks he hears his name. 

A hand closes around Martin’s wrist, stops him furiously shaking it and is enough to jolt him out of himself.

‘No, don’t, you’ll–!’

Jon doesn’t relent. Martin blinks through tears to watch him as he rotates Martin’s wrist until the palm is up, inspects the sick black stain on Martin’s fingertips and makes an unbothered ‘Hmm’. 

It’s easier, to watch Jon, than to think about anything. To focus on Jon’s eyes, tired and somehow softened by the hardships he’s faced, rather than hardened; or the wisps of hair escaping his ponytail around his ears that Martin wants to reach out and smooth down, but daren’t because his hands are so _dirty_ – but it’s far nicer to look at Jon’s hands. They’re smudged and a little dusty, one with deep burn scars and both with pockmarks from the worms that never fail to make a deep, defensive anger rise within Martin, no matter what else he might currently be feeling. Martin loves Jon’s hands. There’s a deep beauty in the fastidiousness of all of his movements, when he’s concentrating on something, as he is now on Martin, holding his wrist so, so gently that it’s somehow far more compelling than if he grabbed and clung for dear life.

‘I–’ says Martin. His eyes are still wet and his mouth is dry and closed up and he doesn’t want to be like this, but he is, isn’t he?

‘Let’s just get this cleaned up,’ says Jon evenly.

‘With _what_ , Jon?’ Martin manages, voice rising in something of his earlier panic. ‘There’s– there’s nothing. Anywhere. There’s never going to _be_ anything. There’s just this– this– mess.’

With the hand that’s not holding Martin’s wrist, Jon reaches up to cup Martin’s cheek just for a moment, a whispersoft press of fingers against his temple. Then he’s, absurdly, one-handedly, wriggling the cuff of his own too-long shirt sleeve over his wrist and into his fingers. 

Then, most ludicrously of all, he spits on it, and begins to gently scrub the oilblack stain from Martin’s fingertips.

‘No– but– you’ll get it…’ Martin trails off and sighs– ‘dirty,’ he finishes at last, now it’s too late.

Jon’s answering look contains a sceptical eyebrow raise. ‘Yes, because it was previously so clean,’ he says. 

Martin sniffles and with his spare hand, reaches up to wipe his eyes, which now feel heavy and itchy. Jon’s gentle scrubbing isn’t– isn’t exactly the shower he desperately craves, but it’s a point of contact, a repetitive motion, a thing he can focus on. He sniffs again and tries not to think about the rest of the dirt and the mess and the lack of everything. He looks at the crown of Jon’s head and wonders what it must be like, to see what he can see and still stop for this.

‘S– sorry, I–’ he tries, his voice, wobbling.

‘Mostly clean,’ interrupts Jon, holding up Martin’s hand gently for Martin to inspect.

 _Mostly_ is the word. The sticky black has faded, but even the best efforts of Jon can’t remove the grime entirely, not when there’s still ash and mud and blood under Martin’s fingernails from the tenement building, the mortal garden and the battlefields. 

Martian lets out a shaky breath. _It’s enough,_ he tells himself. 

‘Yeah, I– uh– thanks,’ he mumbles.

Jon’s answering expression is one that knows he hasn’t succeeded in his comfort entirely, because how can he. He curls his fingers around Martin’s and squeezes, just the once. There’s a black mark on the cuff of his shirt now, and he doesn’t seem to notice it.

‘All right,’ Jon says at last. ‘Let’s get you out of your underpants.’ He says this with such a flatly academic tone and yet also an accompanying waggle of his eyebrows that’s so outrageously, _awfully_ bad at being suggestive in the way that only Jon can be that it startles a laugh out of Martin, albeit a rather wet one.

Martin’s spare trousers are… not clean, because of course they’re not. They’re not as bad as they could be, given things. Time doesn’t exist, after all. But there’s still a coating of mud around the ankles and tears from the thorns in the mortal garden. The best he and Jon can do for cleaning their clothes is swapping them over and tying the recently worn ones to the backs of their packs to air them out. The winds of the Vast had been about as good as that got.

Still, it’s better than… what he had been wearing. His eyes flick down to his old jeans and he shudders and pulls the spare pair on. Then he stoops to re-lace his boots.

Jon picks up his filthy, rotten jeans covered with extinction couch grime and begins to affix them to the outside of Martin’s pack, just like they always do.

‘I don’t think there’s much point,’ says Martin, more sharply than he intended. Just the thought of wearing those things again… he doesn’t think he can.

Jon continues in his work all the same. ‘ _Leave no trace_ ,’ he quotes, with something of an ironic smile. ‘That’s what the hiking book you bought us in Scotland said, wasn’t it?’

The noise Martin makes is a strangled, hysterical thing, because it’s either that or start crying again. ‘I don’t think that applied to the literal post apocalyptic manifestation of pollution destroying the Earth,’ he almost yells. ‘We aren’t– we can’t– this isn’t– we’re not _making it better_.’ He buries his face in his hands, tugs sharply at the edges of his hair as he does and leans over into himself.

‘Martin–’

There are hands on his, and they’re kinder and softer than he deserves, running over them and through his hair and then onto his shoulders and around his back, stroking, petting; soothing, murmured meaningless nothings in his ears. Martin drops his hands and buries his face in Jon’s shoulder heavily and allows himself to lean..

‘I– I– I just want to wake up,’ he admits shamefully into the uneven fabric of Jon’s collar. ‘I want to wake up and– and– have a shower– and– God, Jon, I want to go to work. I want to _go to work_. Can you imagine?’

Jon’s answer is something of a bleak laugh, choked out and cut off in the same breath.

‘Oh, Martin,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry–’

‘Don’t.’ Martin leans back and cuts him off, a little too sharply. ‘I need– I need to be able to– to– this, without you blaming yourself, all right?’

Jon’s answering noise is doubtfully acquiescent.

Martin sighs into his shoulder. ‘Sorry, I– just– Christ. I can’t believe I want to go to work.’

‘Well we can swing by your desk on our way to the Panopticon,’ says Jon drily, although with a hint of humour. 

‘God, Jon, that’s not what I– shut up,’ says Martin, although he can’t help the laugh that escapes, high pitched with an edge of hysteria though it is. ‘Can you imagine? “Hi Elias. We’ll be up in a sec. Just doing a bit of filing first. Wanted to feel normal. How do you want your tea?”’

He leans back and scrubs a hand over his face and through his hair, and looks back just in time to see Jon frown. He’s honestly not sure if he needs to reassure his boyfriend that _no, don’t worry, he won’t actually be making their murderous apocalypse-causing boss a nice cup of tea_ , but Christ he’s too exhausted for that discussion.

‘Do you ever just… think maybe this is all just a bad dream?’ he asks tentatively, and cringes instantly with regret. He just wants– he wants to not be alone in this. He feels the urge to clarify what he means: not them, of course not _them_. But Jon will know that, won’t he? Won’t he? Or will be? ‘Not, not us. Obviously. Ha. I mean. I just mean. You know. I keep thinking. All we’ve got to do. Is just. A little bit longer. Get to the castle. Defeat the final boss. Level up. And then we wake up and we’re back in London and everything is– you know. There.’

Jon’s answering expression is quixotic and rapidly shifting before it settles on something like a grimace. ‘I don’t… quite have that luxury,’ he says at last.

‘Wh– oh Jesus, sorry, I–’

‘Martin, it’s fine–’

‘I– I didn’t mean–’

‘I know, Martin,’ he says, overriding Martin’s stumbling objections. ‘But this world’s written across me like a brand. I can’t ignore its reality, even for a moment.’ The corner of his mouth quirks up. It’s not a smile. Martin reaches for his hand blindly and grabs it. Jon leans over and presses his cheek against Martin’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right, you know,’ he says at last.

‘What is?’ says Martin.

‘If– if it’s easier, for you to think of it like that. You don’t have to try and– see what I see. You couldn’t, in fact.’

Martin’s lip twists slightly. ‘I– I dunno,’ he says. ‘I– I think that might make it harder, when I do remember.’ 

‘Maybe,’ says Jon. 

Martin leans back into him. An image of Simon Fairchild soaring through his domain victorious suddenly pops into his head. A man who existed in the real world and exists here. Someone who Martin wanted dead, who he _wants_ dead, but who was once just… a man. Easy to forget that. Easy to think it doesn’t matter. He’s still not sure it does. He burrows his head in Jon’s hair.

‘All right?’ asks Jon, after a moment’s silence.

‘I– don’t think so,’ says Martin, but he’s not crying, at least, ‘but we’d better get on with it, anyway.’

‘If you’re sure?’

‘Yeah, I– this wasn’t meant to– we’ve delayed long enough. Basira and Daisy’ll need us.’

Jon swallows, then nods. ‘All right,’ he says. He pulls back from Martin slowly, then stoops to finish with Martin’s pack - first finishing attaching Martin’s dirty jeans to the outside and then neatly folding his underwear into a carrier bag and zipping it into one of the side pockets.

‘Jon–’ says Martin.

Jon stands and offers the pack to Martin. ‘ _Leave no trace_ ,’ he quotes again, unrelenting.

Martin shoulders the rucksack and tries not to look at the eldritch abomination of a rubbish dump that surrounds them on all sides, doing his best to convey to Jon exactly what he thinks about this with a look.

‘I know,’ says Jon, ‘we’re not making anything better, but–’ He pauses and looks around them before fixing his eyes back to Martin, ‘let’s not make anything worse.’

His voice is tentative and small and Martin can’t help but reach for his hand, feeling a sudden, stupid giddy rush of love. He thinks this gesture is for him – hope in a doomed world isn’t much Jon’s forte these days, so it’s hard to know if he’d even bother if not for Martin. Martin’s momentarily without words to express what he wants, so all he can do is grab at Jon and cling. 

Jon clings back, like he always does, no matter how much muck or dirt Martin’s waded through that day.

‘Yeah,’ says Martin at last, voice still thick and choked, but not the way it was, ‘yeah, not– not worse– sounds, like something to shoot for, I suppose.’

And together they walk into whatever the next nightmare brings.

**Author's Note:**

> And yes I know I'm like... 2 months late with this. But 2020 has been A Year. I, like Martin, would just like to go into the office, do some filing, and make a cup of tea for my evil boss, but that is still Illegal.
> 
> Title is a lyric from Tom Lehrer's [Pollution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPrAuF2f_oI) because, well, song lyric titles + that song meant I had to. (To quote [imperfectcircle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectcircle/) who also did a Tom Lehrer title, "yes, I do think I'm very funny, thanks".)
> 
> If you liked this, I've written [other TMA things](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyopals/works?fandom_id=11812534). I'm also [shinyopals](https://shinyopals.tumblr.com/) on tumblr - please come and say hello! 
> 
> Comments/kudos/love of any sort is treasured! <3


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